


These Reset Bones

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Book 8: Tiamat's Wrath, Gen, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: “You worried about my immortal soul, Cap? ‘Cause that ship sailed a long time ago.”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	These Reset Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [graveExcitement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveExcitement/gifts).



> Spoilers through the end of book 8! You've been warned.

As the weeks passed Holden kept hanging around, his presence so constant it made Amos itchy. Holden would sit and watch Amos eat — he was always watching. For the first time in a long time Amos had to think about the way he ate. If he was using utensils the way he was supposed to, if he was chewing the right number of times.

Or Holden would just happen to find himself outside Amos’s cabin at the beginning of his shift, asking how Amos had slept. “Any weird dreams?” Holden had asked once, expectant, and Amos just glared at him. It was true that he hadn’t dreamed since the change, but nobody would miss dreams like Amos’s. His memory was a treasure trove of horrors, and he slept better knowing none of them would find him at his most vulnerable.

On the day Amos caught Holden double-checking his maintenance work, he finally had to say something.

“We’re still not done talking about this, huh?” was what he went with.

Holden looked embarrassed, briefly, then straightened his shoulders. “It takes some getting used to.”

Amos looked down at his arms. The skin paler than it used to be, almost gray. It hadn’t taken much getting used to for Amos. Shit like this happened near him, and to him, all the damn time. Usually because of Holden. “You should know,” Amos said pointedly.

His brow furrowed. “This isn’t the same as what happened to me.”

Amos shrugged. He’d been giving it a lot of thought during these long weeks of Holden dogging his steps. Everyone else seemed like they’d adjusted to…whatever Amos was now. But Holden — Holden of all people, Holden who’d done the protomolecule’s bidding, following it through the solar system and millions of lightyears beyond — he just didn’t seem to get it.

So Amos had been thinking of ways to make him get it. He didn’t like the feeling of Holden not understanding him. They’d been together a long time.

He said, “The protomolecule — Miller — he gave you information, right? When you needed it. I just got the information all at once.” He didn’t think Holden would’ve handled it well: the sudden influx of new memories buried just beneath Amos’s own, ripe for the harvest. Holden needed a gentler touch. Amos didn’t say that part out loud, because it was probably rude.

“But you _died_. And now you’re not…” It seemed like Holden was struggling to find the words.

Amos wasn’t. “Human,” he supplied, then shook his head. “No, I am. Mostly.” And then he paused, and clarified: “Not less than before.”

Holden opened and closed his mouth a few times, like he wanted to argue. Like he was going to insist that Amos had been as fully human as any of them, an obvious lie, at least as Amos understood it.

He missed Clarissa. Clarissa had made sense to him; she had _been_ him. All the human and not-so-human parts of them. All the ways they’d shapeshifted to stay alive, all the ways they’d made themselves less whole.

Almost by rote Amos said, “What was it like for you?” He didn’t especially care about Holden’s answer, but he’d learned over the years to say the right things most of the time. He attributed most of that to Naomi, who’d gone so far as to talk things out with him, step by step. When someone says hello, you say hello back; when they ask how you are, you tell them you’re fine. None of this had ever been obvious to him. No one who might have taught him such things had survived long enough to.

Holden leaned back in his chair, letting his shoulders slouch. The hair at his temples all gone to silver, and he still thought Amos was the only one who’d changed. “It was a voice in my head,” he said, with some hesitation, so Amos knew that wasn’t the whole story. “You know that. The protomolecule was using Miller. His voice, his memories. It talked to me like him, but it wasn’t him.”

“Mine’s not like that,” Amos said.

But Holden wasn’t done. “Naomi called him a ghost, and maybe that was right. It was a haunting.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. Holden trailed his fingers through his hair, stopping to rub his temples. 

This time, Amos waited to see if he’d say more. He’d had to learn that too. Years ago he’d had to count out the seconds to know how long he was supposed to wait before he looked away or kept working.

“It wasn’t really Miller, though.” Holden looked right at him when he said this, for the first time in minutes. “And I guess that’s why…why I can’t stop wondering if you’re really Amos. You talk like him, you look like him, mostly. But that’s not all we are.”

“You worried about my immortal soul, Cap? ‘Cause that ship sailed a long time ago.” It was the kind of thing Holden worried about, even if those weren’t the words he’d use. Amos got it, but it wasn’t something he’d thought much about before he died, and he sure wasn’t going to start now. They had bigger problems.

Holden put his hands on his hips and stomped around for a minute. Amos let him. Finally he said, “Do you remember dying?”

Now _that_ was an interesting question. He remembered getting shot. That sucked, but getting shot always sucked, it wasn’t worse than usual. He’d passed out, and that happened too sometimes, when your body lost too much blood or took on too much pain. Maybe that was when he’d died. He knew they’d blown the top of his skull clean off, so sure, yeah — he remembered dying.

It was just that he’d woken up again, and well, that had felt the same too. Bones in his leg sore where they’d been regrowing, skin tender and blue-black. Except instead of waking up strapped into the autodoc with Naomi’s face or Alex’s hovering over his, he woke up in a cave.

“It’s like I was taken apart and put back together. Better, probably.” He _felt_ better. He felt stronger, faster. He felt 30 years younger. Sucked he’d had to die to get here, but at least he’d come back.

And whatever it was, it felt better than the other changes he’d been through. Better than getting older, better than losing Clarissa or Bobbie. He’d regrown parts before; was this so different? There were new pieces of him now, things he was slowly discovering, but none of it felt wrong. It was just this: something lodged under the skin. A bruise faded past the point of tenderness.

“I think you’re asking the wrong questions,” Amos said after another moment. “I make you uncomfortable. I get it. But now you’ve gotta take that as given. The real question is, now that I’m different — what happens next?”

Holden gave him a frustrated look. “You tell me.”

“Way I see it, you and me have something nobody else has: information about this stuff and whatever killed it. Seems like these dead aliens really want to talk to us. Now we just gotta listen.”

Holden scratched his neck. “I’m not always great at that.”

“No, you’re not. I’m pretty good, though.” It was one of the things he’d walked away with from Laconia: he was better at listening now than he’d ever been. “But you’ve gotta trust me.”

Holden looked him over for the thousandth time, like he might find a different answer on this, number one thousand and one. Like if he just turned his head the right way, Amos would be back the way he was and the universe would make sense again.

“I can’t stand the thought of losing anyone else,” Holden said. His voice was soft. Amos understood that this meant he was admitting something, saying out loud something he usually kept quiet.

Almost everyone they’d known on Earth was dead. Dead long enough now they were ash and bone, new trees rooting in the dust of their bodies. You didn’t just walk away from that kind of loss. Amos knew.

“I’m not lost, Cap.”

Holden reached out and they clasped forearms. Holden’s gaze drifted down to the veins in Amos’s arms, flickering electric blue.

“I know we were fighting this stuff for a long time, but now we’re on the same team,” Amos said. The other team was worse than Holden could possibly imagine. Amos was going to have to ease him into that. No matter how many aliens burrowed into his brain, Amos would never forget what it had been like when the rocks hit: the death and the suffering, the blood and the darkness. And right now shit was poised to get a whole lot worse.

“Yeah,” Holden said. “I’ve thought about that.”

Amos nodded. “Which means either way, so are we.”

The two of them looked at each other. Amos made himself blink. He was pretty sure he didn’t need to anymore, but he was equally sure that it would freak Holden out if he didn’t.

“Either way,” Holden finally echoed.

Amos released him. “Good talk,” he said, and counted to ten. Holden didn’t move or speak. 

So Amos picked up the spanner again and turned away. “I’ve got work to do,” he said, letting the new buzz in his muscles guide his hands, _feeling_ the _Roci_ in a way he was still getting used to. He turned to look over his shoulder at Holden. “So do you.”

Holden ducked his head and almost smiled. “Yeah.”

Amos heard the door slide open and Holden’s boots on the floor. The footsteps stopped again just outside the door. Amos didn’t turn around this time.

“Amos?” Holden said. “I’m glad you made your way home.”

The footsteps disappeared. Amos pressed his hands against the cool metal wall of the ship and told it, “Me too.”


End file.
